


Bespoke

by Cucumber_Oil



Category: Child's Play/Chucky (Movies)
Genre: Aggressive-Aggressive Destruction of a Roommate's Property, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Passive-Aggressive Clothes Shopping, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-22 10:57:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22315198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cucumber_Oil/pseuds/Cucumber_Oil
Summary: Just a small slice of life inspired by grimey_gal's amazing work 'In The End'; posted here with her kind permission. Non-canon bullshit wherein Chucky doesn't want to update his wardrobe, and Andy doesn't care what Chucky wants, because Andy wants his own damn shirt back.
Relationships: Andy Barclay/Chucky | Charles Lee Ray
Comments: 17
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [In the End](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2448419) by [grimey_gal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimey_gal/pseuds/grimey_gal). 



Here's the truth, and don't tell anyone: it starts because Andy really likes that Star Wars t-shirt.

  
It's ancient by this point. Six years may not seem like much, but that's an impressive run when you consider the artifact in question is a cheap graphic print from Target. It's made of cotton, cotton that started thin and has only gotten thinner with time, and it has a tie-fighter blueprint that faded in endless rounds in the wash until it's nothing but a vague graphed square. There's a splatter of bleach staining the hem. The sleeves are a little raggedy. Definitely not something any self-respecting man would wear out of the house. 

  
It goes without saying it's the softest, most comfortable shirt Andy owns.

  
It's also the one he never gets to _wear_ anymore.

  
He wouldn't be so tetchy about this if he got to wear it once in a while. Maybe every third wash. Set up a time-share. (Which, being truthful again: all lies. He would never willingly take turns with the bastard on anything. It's nice to pretend to be an adult, though.)

  
The t-shirt goes from washer, to dryer, to laundry basket, to t-shirt drawer, to Chucky's body, to hamper, to washer, to dryer, to Chucky's goddamn body again. Half the time it's still warm. Andy can tell because the doll will make a pleased smirk after he's tugged it on, small hands clutching greedily, snuggling up into the warm cotton and looking happy as a cat in a sunbeam. The longest time Andy's been in contact with his own shirt was four hours Chucky spent passed out on the couch after a particularly impressive bender (the result of a shouted phone call: something about Tiffany, and the kids' recital for something, and honestly Andy had stopped listening after a bit and just watched with grudging respect as Chucky drank what must have been nearly his own weight in whiskey and raged half-coherently for a while.) Chucky crashed hard shortly after, not even caring they were only halfway through a late showing of Fast and Furious, and thus for four hours Andy got to have a grumbling, snoring disaster sprawled out against his leg. A disaster wearing his most comfortable t-shirt. He snuck a nostalgic rub of the hem, just to ascertain it was as soft as he remembered it. It was.

  
So long story short: Chucky keeps stealing his damn shirt. He steals other shirts, too, but Faded Tie-Fighter's the best one, and it's completely unfair that Andy's roomie is the only one who gets to wear it. That's like if Chucky was the one to smoke the lion's share of the green, or drink the lion's share of the alcohol, or eat the lion's share of the snacks. Which are also things that happen, because Chucky is basically two and a half feet of gaping pit, but at least with those it feels...useful, somehow. Nothing can really satisfy the monstrous hunger that drives him to hunt and track and scream, but it feels like Andy's got a responsibility to let him wreck havoc on the pantry, as if raiding the cabinets might dull the edge of that voraciousness. 

  
The more Chucky gets blitzed and hangs out on the couch, grumbling and cussing and heckling Andy, the less he ranges at night. Which means more time spent lazing around wearing the shirt in question. Which means more time spent wondering how the hell to get him out of it. _Asking_ seems like a great way to make sure Chucky wears it for the rest of his life. Or rips it in half. For Chucky, "if I can't have it, nobody can" aren't the words of a psycho; they're the words of a psycho _and_ a great life motto.

  
Andy's next thought had been to spray the shirt with something offensive, maybe perfume; that too ran the risk of getting the shirt perforated. Chucky likes to Swiss-cheese anything that surprises him. Disappointment, annoyance, or the faint suspicion somebody is fucking with him are also great ways to get something ventilated. Which has brought Andy to Idea Number Three.

  
They need to get Chucky more clothes.

  
Sounds crazy, but it's not. The doll's becoming more human all the time; he sweats these days, enough to notice the faint sheen on his brow if he gets worked up, and it's only a matter of time before clothes-hunting is unavoidable. They may as well get ahead of the curve. Otherwise Chucky's going to wear his t-shirt to threads. 

  
So, again, long story short: shirt basically hostage, clothing options too slim, can't say no, try saying yes. Chucky always responds better to an offer of options than to a firm boundary. Something deep in his ruined psyche seems to take a boundary as a _challenge_.

  
All of this to explain that there's totally a sane, logical, completely not-crazy reason why Andy inhales one night, puffs out a mouthful of smoke, and says, "So what's your pants size?"

  
Chucky spits pad thai right across the coffee table.

  
" _Jesus_ , kid," he wheezes, after he's slammed a fist into his own chest a few times, hacking up the last of the sauce that went down the wrong tube. Andy watches in vague annoyance ("I'm not surprised, just disappointed" is Andy's own life motto right now, thanks for asking) as his Star Wars shirt gets a few more stains. "What the _fuck_?"

  
"Do you even know?" Stains aren't such a huge deal -- it's not like the tie fighter isn't basically an assortment of stains already -- and anyway he's too high to get worked up. He intentionally left this conversation until he had a nice buzz going. "I mean, have you ever checked the tag? If there's even a tag?" He squints down at the doll, realizing something. "I guess doll clothes don't have sizes."

  
"Not unless I missed some weird fetish somewhere," says Chucky, eyeing him suspiciously. "Which, granted, always an option with the internet these days, but I try to keep up. Why the fuck you wanna know my pants size? You want a pair? Was that a line to get in 'em?"

"No, I...how do you buy clothes the right size? Or find them?"

  
Chucky leers at him. "Why, the overalls finally lose their charm? Ageless, I keep tellin' Tiff. Tigers don't ditch their stripes, I don't ditch my camouflage."

  
"Trying to buy you something," says Andy calmly, and Chucky's sneer turns into confused suspicion. "You're gonna start sweating through them. You're gonna need a wardrobe."

  
"Deal with that the time comes," growls Chucky, and turns back to the TV and his food. 

  
Andy feels his brow furrow. He hadn't expected Chucky to shut it down so fast. Everyone needs clothes. He's always assumed the lack of a closet was sheer laziness. "You don't want a second set? Jacket? A hat for winter?" He can't help but grin; the idea of Chucky in a knitted hat is hilarious. And kind of awful. Which is most of what his roommate is these days, funny and awful all at once. Andy doesn't like to think about how now and again, the funny is starting to outweigh the awful.

  
Chucky just grunts, which is his way of saying he has no interest in the topic at hand, and he'll start firing off insults or bullets if it doesn't make itself scarce. Andy stops pushing. He's not sure how to approach the situation without endangering his shirt (any more than dinner has endangered it already) so he retreats for the moment to strategize.

  
\---

  
"You want to _what_ ," says Kristen.

  
Andy sighs. It's nice to meet up for coffee. It's shitty to constantly have to be explaining his motives for everything Chucky-related. Mostly because his motives, where his murderous roommate are involved, are hardly clear enough for him to understand them himself. Explaining them to someone else is just a headache and a half.

  
"I wanna buy him some clothes. For the autumn." He waves a hand half-heartedly. Kristen's expression lets him know just how little she's buying it.

  
"You wanna buy him _clothes_?"

  
"Everyone needs clothes," he protests.

  
On his other side, Jess has a similar expression of someone detecting bullshit. "Sorry, when did I miss that that he can't find his own fucking clothes? He's like _sixty_?"

  
"No," says Andy, although he really doesn't want to get into that right now, either. He doesn't really want to get into _anything_ Chucky-related. Not even Chucky-adjacent. "He's thirty. Forty. Forty-something?" Fifty, maybe? Fuck, he used to know Ray's biography inside and out. 

  
"Oh, only forty-something. The wee babe." Jess rolls her eyes and busies herself with her mug. Andy suspects it's to swallow down something annoyed along with her coffee. 

  
Kristen, on the other hand, has no interest in letting him off the hook. "Please tell me there's more to this than you thinking he needs a Back To School wardrobe."

  
"That is absolutely awful and I hate that you said it." He grimaces. The last thing he wants to suggest to Chucky is a return to any school, at all, literally ever. "He's gonna turn human, and he's gonna need clothes, and I'm tired of him stealing mine when he needs them now. If I give him clothes he won't slash up mine when I try to take them back, so I need to figure out where to get an enormous doll some decent pants." Kristen is giving him a close look. He frowns at her. "What?"

  
"He needs your clothes...why?"

  
An memory flashes to mind of coming home from work to find his roomie sitting at the table, grinning fiercely, dried crimson crusted across half his torso and lower jaw. Sometimes it almost feels like Chucky's waiting for Andy to see him that way, trying to press a confrontation about it -- but when Andy sighs and pushes past to the bathroom, there will always be a little angry growl, challenging, but nothing more. Like he wants to tango about it, but he doesn't. Like there's something fraught at stake but he won't let Andy in on the details. Like he _wants_ to get slammed head-first into the table until he breaks and babbles out whatever filthy thing he's done. 

  
Andy shuts down that train of thought. From the girls' looks, he suspects they're struggling with their own mental images right now. He strives ahead. "He's got to wash his stuff sometime. And neither of us want him walking around with his balls out while he does."

  
Jess chokes on her coffee. Kristen gives a long-suffering sigh. "Yeah, okay, let's never mention any of those words together in that order ever again? Cool. So you need tiny pants." She giggles suddenly. "Oh god. You might have to just buy more doll clothes."

  
"I mean, I thought of that, but I didn't know if --" He stops. Didn't know if what?

  
"What? You could find them?" asks Jess.

  
"They'd be comfortable?" asks Kristen, eyes narrowed.

  
He frowns. It's not that he cares about the doll's comfort. At the same time, if they aren't comfortable clothes, he may as well kiss his t-shirt goodbye. Chucky has no problem trashing (or ripping, or burning, or stabbing, or etc.) anything he considers a waste of space. Certainly itchy pants would be included in that. "I mean," he fumbles, "don't doll clothes not come off, usually?"

  
"Andy, my man, you've clearly never been a godmother who has to figure out which set of clothes Fancy Hair Elsa doesn't have yet. I won't hold it against you." Kristen pats his hand. "There are _loads_ of clothes and shit for dolls. Just go to Walmart. Trust me, it's a wonderland in there, provided you're two feet tall and have no taste."

  
"Okay," says Andy, still frowning, thinking of what he's seen of the doll aisle from a distance: pink, plastic, some frilly things, usually an enormous horse (often also pink, plastic, and frilly.) "If you say so. I guess I can look."

  
"Oh, yeah, you'll definitely find something there." Jess gives him a devious grin. "Maybe even something that's salmon instead of pink. I'm sure he'll appreciate that."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Added a warning for violence. Nothing series-abnormal. I figure you know what you're getting into; most of the time all Andy and Chucky trade are blunts, both illegal substance and force trauma.

On Tuesday, Andy walks down the doll aisle at Walmart and does his absolute best not to look lost.

  
Judging from the way parents keep eyeing him thoughtfully and then pulling their kids away, he's failing. Well, he's been charged with just about every other crime under the sun, sometimes even fairly; may as well add 'Walmart creeper' to the list. He focuses on the task at hand instead.

  
The situation doesn't look good. Everything is either a dress, neon, or owned by a fat-cheeked, wide-eyed plastic body already. He stops next to a particularly vapid-looking subject (a "My Size Sadie" according to the box) and considers his options. Sequins and glitter and pink pink PINK aside, most of these clothes look way too small; as much as leaving a sparkly pink sweater on the sofa and waiting for the furious shrieks of offense would be _hilarious_ , it's not going to do anyone any good if Chucky doesn't even fit in anything. The doll's a little oddly-shaped compared to the fashionistas here. 

  
The least malformed doll seems to be Sadie; she lacks Barbie's weirdly square hips. That's a start, at least. He squints at her magenta corduroys. Those look human-shaped. But will they be too short? He holds a hand out by his side, thinking of where it would meet Chucky's hair. Where does his roommate's stomach sit? Is it wider than Sadie's trim waist? Thoughtfully, he puts both hands up, trying to grasp a foggy idea of a shape. 

  
The muscle-memory of Chucky's heavy plastic weight, squeezed tightly in his hands, is so deeply ingrained it's almost carved into Andy's DNA. (On particularly bad nights he'll wake with a phantom soreness in the soft skin of his upper arm. His body is haunted by the ghost of an ache, the bruise from a hard head gripped all night for reassurance.) Chucky's measurements are malformed through the lens of Andy's child-sized physique; like an absent father or a traumatically aggressive dog, the doll feels larger than life, warped into a towering, powerful monster. 

  
Chucky used seem almost too big to hold. Now Andy can heft him one-handed, easy as a gallon of milk. Easy as a basketball. A briefcase. A shotgun.

  
"May I help you, sir?"

  
He jolts out of himself and turns, quickly identifying the woman who startled him. Just an employee, a petite blonde smiling the brittle dead smile of retail workers everywhere. He smiles tightly back, adrenaline pumping, and hopes she didn't notice the way his muscles tensed to fire an elbow at her gut or shatter her nose. "Uh, no, I'm good."

  
"Anything I can help you find?"

  
"Uh, yeah, no." He realizes his hands are still outstretched, miming grabbing Sadie around the waist, and drops them quickly. "Just, shopping for my niece. Christmas. Y'know. Kids." _Sure, fantastic. Natural as anything. Great job, Barclay_ , he thinks, and tries not to let his smile flip upside down.

  
"That's so sweet of you! Can I help you pick something out?"

  
Rigor-mortis smile still wedged in place, Andy studies her in confusion, before movement draws his attention and he glances over her shoulder; a a sour-faced sixty-something, clutching her purse and hovering near the head of the aisle, glowers back at him defiantly. The lightbulb goes on. "Oh." The weird layers of irony going on right now do not escape him, but it wouldn't do him any favors to laugh; instead he nods briefly at the poor employee. She's still bravely making an attempt at an interested, helpful expression. He wants to tell the girl her eyes look deader than his murderous roommate's, and his are made of plastic (though not, contrary to popular opinion, completely soulless.) Instead he tells her he'll have to think about the My Size Sadie -- neither the worker nor the concerned senior citizen look comforted by that, and he can't blame them -- and makes a hasty retreat.

  
Doll aisle's out, then. Even if he had a good idea of what would fit Chucky, he's not looking to get escorted out of Walmart by loss prevention. It didn't look like fertile ground anyway. That still leaves him sans one new doll outfit, and his favorite shirt in danger of being held hostage for the rest of its flimsy life.

* * *

"You want to buy him clothes?" says Mrs. Norris, _née_ Barclay. "Whatever _for_?"

  
Andy looks down at his hands and doesn't answer. With his mother, this is ok. It's about the only place in the world it's ok.

  
Karen watches him for a minute, then looks down to her tea cup with indifference. In the moment Andy is painfully, intensely grateful for her understanding. He takes an even breath and tries again. "He needs something else to wear besides the overalls. Now that he's turning human."

  
A flash of something like distaste, or maybe just confusion, flits briefly across her face before her expression settles again. She just nods as if this concern is perfectly reasonable. And it is, as much as worrying about purchasing clothes for a serial-killer-turned-child's-toy-now-returning-to-human-form-only-not-the-original-one can be. Which is to say, not at fucking all.

  
Correction: _your_ serial killer. Not _a_ serial killer. Because Chucky is Andy's. Always has been, despite every attempt from both sides. Always will be, apparently. For better or worse, richer or poorer, 'til death -- mercifully -- _finally_ \--

  
"And you've tried the doll aisle?"

  
Andy scowls at the thought. "Yeah. Deeeefinitely looked like a pedo."

  
"Oh, I don't believe that."

  
"A little old lady tried to get me escorted out." He notices the twitch of her mouth. "Which wasn't funny."

  
"Of course not," his mother assures him with a comfortingly bland expression, her twinkling eyes saying it absolutely is.

  
He sighs. "Anyway, nothing seemed quite the right shape. He's sort of...I don't know, hell. Squat. And a boy. It was all girl clothes. I didn't think I could wrestle him into a plaid skirt." The vision that strikes immediately, of Chucky in a schoolgirl's kilt, arms crossed, brow knotted in infuriated humiliation, is both hilarious and interesting. Anything involving throwing a wrench into Chucky's gears is interesting. Frankly, there isn't much left that gets Andy's arms goosebumped the way they do when he can dig his fingers into those gears and _twist_ , ratcheting springs too tight, pinching wires, stripping screws until something has to choke up and spurt sparks. Until the monster has to transform.

  
Andy isn't sure where this urge to set Chucky off comes from. God knows his life has essentially been one long series of events that each started with something setting Chucky off. At this point it shouldn't even be a conscious decision; his entire being should be laser-focused on avoiding anything that might engage the doll's brutal fury. Most bad things have begun with the shocked widening of pale eyes that preface the doll's violent gear-shifts. Yet almost daily Andy finds himself struck by the urge to start something, fingers twitching to grasp any loose thread that will irritate or offend, humiliate or trip Chucky up until there's that startled flash of baby blue. It's like the itch to open a bottle, but without the promise of sweet unconsciousness at the end. Just the promise of blood, and blood, and blood, until the world's narrowed down to nothing but the slippery, sick red heat between them and the pressure of Chucky's gasping throat under his thumbs.

  
There are a lot of spontaneous urges towards Chucky he doesn't understand. There's a deep, incomprehensible place in Andy that likes to toss curveballs, noting in the morning that his roommate looks sluggish and _wouldn't it be nice to tell him you made coffee_ ; a place that, coyly, won't let Andy know whether it wants to see that cruel face smooth into appreciative relaxation or tighten from the pain of a burned tongue. A place that wonders, as he's drifting off to sleep on rainy nights, whether Chucky's in the next room. Quiet, almost thoughtless concern, like the pressure of owning a cat, knowing they chose to go roaming and yet wishing they were home. 

  
A place that sometimes suggests how easy it would be to put Chucky's hand down the garbage disposal and just hold him there, gripping his juddering arm, listening absently to the layered sounds: choke of the sink drain, splatter of blood, pitch of agonized screams. The place that sometimes reminds Andy how easy it would be to walk into the other bedroom one night, bind each limb to a corner of the bed, and then simply wait it out; letting him get thinner and thinner by the day, coming in now and then to watch the weakening struggle and the dulling eyes, listening to the mutating litany of increasingly desperate and creative pleas falling from Chucky's dehydrated lips.

  
Andy's not a sociopath. He's quite sure of that. 

  
Really. He's not. That's definitely something he'd know about himself. 

  
Or at least one of the many therapists would have noticed, over the years. Somebody would have told him, right?

  
He's never felt the urge to drag out the suffering of another human. Not even an animal, which is a better classification for his roommate than 'human', that's for sure. Besides, isn't he owed a little payback? And maybe a little more, and maybe a little more after that, considering all the innocent parts of him that animal gnawed through? He'd be a sociopath if he _didn't_ harbor a grudge. Maybe he's experiencing bursts of proactive aggression, like a primed immune system responding over-zealously to an allergen. 

  
Just, it would be nice if the thoughts came in the heat of the moment, like any passionate thought. During an argument, say. Or when Chucky shows up at night, bloodied, his eyes glinting with malice and his clothes splattered with the residue of unknown cruelties. Not at random, peeking into Andy's consciousness in the middle of a quiet Sunday afternoon. Nudging gently at his brain when the sound of Chucky's footsteps echo softly on tile. Prodding him to glance over the back of the couch and watch his roommate shuffle around the kitchen, doing nothing more malevolent than making coffee...and that serene thought unfurling from somewhere unknown, murmuring how easy it would be to stride into the kitchen while Chucky is busy clambering up to the counter for a mug, how _easy_ to simply slam the cupboard door on his reaching arm again, again, again, again _again again_ as his body kicks and fights and scratches and shrieks, as the plastic dents and stretches, as the slowly forming bones give aborted snaps, as the horrible bruising begins to spread up to the elbow --

  
"Thrift stores," says Karen, suddenly. "How could I be such a dummy? You just go to a thrift store!"

  
"A thrift store," he repeats, thrown off-balance not by the idea but by the sound of pleased confidence in her voice. His mother always sounds this satisfied when she's assessed and then solved a long-standing issue. He hadn't really expected her to take this particular puzzle seriously; it's buying Chucky a pair of _pants_ , for chrissake. 

  
She nods firmly. "Salvation Army. Goodwill. Something like that. They'll have boy things. There's always loads of kids' clothes, children grow so fast. I used to shop there for you all the time." She smiles faintly, eyes going distant.

  
Andy watches her gaze travel away. Back into the dim, troubled world of single motherhood and too-tight budgets. Back to the brief period of (as he recalls it, at least, in the relatively small-worries world of a child) happiness. Back to songs before bed and cocoa on winter mornings. 

  
There's monsters lurking in the mists of the past, and he only allows himself to dip his toes before he yanks himself back to the present. She doesn't look distressed. He reaches out and presses her hand in his anyway, holding it gently but firmly until she also dredges back up from the years, blinking herself back to now. He smiles warmly. "That's a great idea, Mom. Thanks."

  
Karen smiles back. There's something absent in her face, like not quite all of her remembered to return. They smile at each other, tea growing cold, and for a while Andy refuses to let the murderous doll swallow up another minute of their attention.


	3. Chapter 3

The Salvation Army is worse than Walmart, if such a thing is possible.

  
To start with, it's full of kids. Kids running between the rows, kids yelling at their moms, kids making a mess of the essentially defunct VHS area (who buys those anymore?) and kids playing hide and seek in the changing rooms. A dozen shrieking, cheerful voices batter against the taut drum of Andy's brain. He shoves his hands into his pockets and wades in.

  
Thrift stores, in his vast experience, are approximately forty percent jeans by volume. He wanders down an entire row of small denim pants, overwhelmed by the idea of going through a hundred small waistbands and assessing the wear on a hundred small pairs of ankles (the hems are always the problem with used jeans; the heels get stepped on a lot, and you can pull a pair of perfectly suitable pants off the rack only to discover the heels are half-gone.) Finally he grabs one pair at random and holds it up to what he hopes looks like a parent's discerning eye.

  
He has no idea how to size these things. Do kids' jeans come in different lengths? Are they like gloves, one size supposedly fitting all? Does Chucky's waist sit at this distance from his hipbones? Where are his hipbones? Does he have any?

  
Andy lowers the jeans, fretful gaze distractedly wandering across the store. Nearby a family of mannequins is showing off new arrivals, and he eyes the child mannequin doubtfully. Next to the adults, it stands near where Chucky would stand, but it doesn't look right. Sort of stretched out. Too skinny, but not in the waist: in the limbs, maybe? Does Chucky have limbs that long?

  
_There was a machine that put the arms in. A whole line of arms, a whole assembly line of plastic arms shuffling slowly along a track like an asymmetrical centipede. A machine grabbed the arms, one by one, and popped them violently into the waiting sockets --_ pop! _\-- of a matching line of bodies, a hundred empty-eyed bodies shambling slowly up a long ramp. The hatred that had been circling in his chest for weeks, helpless and terrified, surged up at the sight; it was stirred to an anxious furor by the idea of so many killing machines being birthed in the bowels of this factory. Gallons of plastic being carved, melted, and poured into weaponry. He'd felt the rage rise so high nausea was crawling up his throat, and if Kyle hadn't grabbed his shoulder at that moment, tugging him along, he might have vomited right there, trapped on all sides by the noisy process of creation. His entire being was ravenous for enough time to rip every forming body back into pieces, burning them down to harmless components, watching them steam and bubble in agony until there was nothing but tons of ruined, flesh-colored plastic flooding the halls of the factory --_

  
Someone clears their throat behind him. He turns sharply, ready to explain himself to another nervous employee (he recited tidbits in the car on the way over: shopping for the kid, he's at his mom's for the weekday but want to surprise him this weekend, don't I sound like an awkward but well-meaning divorced father, pity points, pat-pat?) Instead he's eye to eye with an unimpressed thirty-something who must be shopping for her own children; her cart is piled with the raucous, primary-colored mess of fabrics that are the domain of the three-to-eight. He realizes she's holding something out towards him.

  
"You dropped these," she says, and his audial memory twinges in recognition to let him know this isn't the first time she's said it. He blinks rapidly, trying to dial back further (had anyone else spoken to him? How long has she been standing here? Sometimes his dips into memory run longer than they should, something his first therapist was all too eager to inform him was a symptom of PTSD) as he reaches out for the tiny pair of jeans.

  
"Uh, thanks -- thanks. Thank you. Hah, dizzy spell." He makes a wavering gesture towards his temple to suggest a headache. "Migraines, y'know?"

  
"Uh-huh." She turns and pushes her cart briskly back down the aisle, meeting another shopper's eyes one row across and making her own wave towards her head, this one the universal finger-circle: _looney toons_. 

  
He flinches and looks back down at the pants clutched in his hand. Now he can see they're all wrong. The small body being built endlessly in that factory lacked any height in the calf. These worn knees would be up by Chucky's thighs.

  
Frustrated, he almost tosses them down; at the last moment he catches himself and gently hangs them back up instead. Then he turns and exits the clothing area at as quickly a pace could nominally be called normal. He's gotten good at faking normal. 

* * *

  
"You're buying him _clothes?_ " says Tiffany. "Like, clothes to _wear?_ "

  
He's getting tired of explaining this, but he responds automatically. "Is there another kind?"

  
"Does an Iron Maiden count?"

  
He's relieved by the amusement in her voice. He'd been uncertain about calling her, given the current state of the ex-lovers' relationship, but it seems Tiffany has a better handle on civility than her former partner (which is not surprising in the least.) "I don't think I could find one short enough." Her raspy giggle comes over the line, and he's startled to find himself smiling.

  
"Try a dog crate, then. A sturdy one." Her wry tone turns perplexed. "But what are the clothes for?"

  
"To wear. I know, totally crazy."

  
"Mm. Generous of you." He hears shuffling, then the clink of glass; he doesn't know Tiffany well enough to judge, but if she's anything like her ex-husband, she's pouring herself a drink. "Which, you do you, honey, but you could choose just about anybody on the planet and they'd deserve it more. I mean, throw the shirt in the trash, it'll hit a nicer piece of shit."

  
"It's not about generosity, I promise. No love lost here."

  
"So I've heard," she sighs, over what is unmistakably the sound of a cork popping, but he's distracted from his correct-guess satisfaction by the strange edge to her tone. Like she's intentionally not saying something, and it's sitting heavy on her tongue. That weird edge, in turn, distracts him from the weirder thought of Chucky discussing the household tension with Tiffany; of course he'd assumed Chucky discusses everything with Tiffany, given the doll's tendency to blab, but thinking about the two lovebirds gossiping about the situation they're in makes his skin itch. "But why the shopping spree?"

  
This is the third time someone's asked and he still doesn't have a reason that sounds good out loud. "I can't do the laundry quick enough."

  
"If he's being such a bitch about it, just let him sit in his dirty clothes until he washes them. He's fussier than you'd think. Won't last a day. I'm talking fussy with a capital F."

  
"Well, I want to wear _my_ clothes someday."

  
On the other end of the phone, her glass clinks hard against a counter. "He's wearing your clothes?"

  
"Any time his are out of order. Blood, mud, alcohol, viscera. You know."

  
"Just yours?"

  
"Nobody lives here but me." _And him, now,_ he should add, but that still sticks in his craw even though there's literally no other way to define the situation they've got going on.

  
Again, the edge to her voice. She sounds like she's walking on a wire. "There's really no helping it, I guess. I had a real cute sweatshirt I pretty much never touched again after he took to it."

  
"I mean, I know he likes it, but if he has his own clothes instead --"

  
"No, you're stuck."

  
"What? Why?"

  
"Sweetie, he likes wearing them because they're _yours_."

  
Understanding dawns suddenly. "Oh, shit. This is a dominance thing, isn't it."

  
He hears nothing but the clink of the wine glass a few times, like she's taking tiny bird-sips to give herself time to think. When she speaks again, the weird sharp tone is gone, lost under a perky friendliness. "Not surprising, right? I think we can safely call it little-man syndrome." 

  
"Goddamnit!"

  
"But we can try," she soothes. "Find him something super comfy and maybe he'll switch."

  
"Godammnit, Tiffany, how did you handle him? He's somewhere between a Napoleon complex and a temper tantrum like all the fucking _time_."

  
"Love makes you stupid, honey," she says frankly. Then he can almost hear her expression brighten. "And a good concussion, oh, sweetie, does that help! Have you tried catching him in your closet and kicking his ass? I heard on the radio once, see, you have to discipline dogs when you catch them in the act, you know, or their silly little brains won't connect the dots."

  
"Does hitting him in the head ever work?" He's a little amused by how weary he sounds at the prospect. Bizarre surges of aggression notwithstanding, he's not really interested in throwing down with Chucky over this; lord knows they throw down often enough already, over enough dumb shit, to make the idea of yet another ongoing brawl tiresome. Plus there's the danger of collateral damage. "Even if it does, he's just going to cut my shirt up the minute he gets away. Just to be a dick."

  
"Good point. You could always try that dog crate. Oh! Or a baby crib! That works, I tried. No, wait, second thought -- do the crate. Crib didn't work that great."

  
He manages to get his heaving laughter under control after a bit. "You put him in a _baby crib,_ " he gasps, "and he didn't kill you?"

  
"Welllll, see, funny story..."

  
Before she can continue, there's the sound of something shattering. All humor is drained from him in an instant, replaced with the familiar ice of fear. "Tiffany? Are you okay?"

  
"Oh, no, I'm fine." Now the garbled cacophony of young voices. Tiffany has to raise her voice to be heard over them. "One of the kids just knocked something over. Yes, I know it wasn't you! Andy, honey, I've gotta go." 

  
"Sure, sure, yeah. Yeah."

  
His pulse is still rocketing around in his ears. She must hear it in his voice, because she shushes the children repeatedly before continuing. "Nothing's wrong. Just a picture frame."

  
"Sure."

  
"Andy." Her tone turns gentle. "You...he's a lot, I know."

  
His snort sounds deadened in his own ears. "You could say that. It'd be too kind, but you could say it."

  
"No, I know. He's too much. You live on a hair trigger when he's around."

  
"When he's around?" he explodes, and suddenly the words are coming out of him faster than he can rein them in, despite knowing she's got to go tend to her children, despite knowing one of them (Glenda) is probably in danger of cutting themselves on glass shards right this moment, despite knowing she isn't the right target of the banked fury that constantly burns in him, simmering every minute of the day, waiting for a chance to flare up. "When he's _around?_ I live with a fucking armory! He always comes back, you're never _safe!_ No matter what you fucking do, he _always comes back!_ "

  
The other side of the phone is very, very quiet. Already Andy feels regret latching little tendrils around his anger, tugging it back towards the deep dark place it came from. Even the children are silent; they must have heard him shouting, or at least seen his noise reflected on their mother's face. Regret's hold strengthens. He forces his voice to mellow. "Tiffany, I'm -- look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean --"

  
"It's fine," she breaks in, and strangely, it doesn't sound coated in a thin veneer of politeness the way so many voices sound when dealing with his outbursts. It sounds blunt. "I get it. He makes you lash out at everyone else because you're always wound up."

  
That's it, exactly, but he doesn't want to identify it that way; not if it's what also describes Chucky's relationship with his one-time lover. "I guess. I'm sorry. Take care of the kids. Oh, and thanks for listening."

  
"Now, you hold on. _Glenda!_ Don't touch that! You hold on one moment, buster. I've known that rat bastard for a long time, and I went steady with him for almost as long."

  
_Sure, and I met him thirty years ago,_ he thinks, but doesn't say. Instead he makes an encouraging 'uh-huh'. He figures she's got plenty of reason to claim vaster Chucky knowledge; hell, she carried his kids.

  
"Andy, he's just a mean ol' junkyard dog. He'll bite anyone who gets close enough. But you don't have to be so scared of him; he's the one that's scared."

  
"Scared?" he bursts out despite himself, feeling his retreating anger froth back up just as swiftly. His free hand clenches until he can feel the bite of his nails in his palm. _Not her, she's not the problem. You are. Keep it the fuck together, Andy Barclay, you trigger-fingery son of a bitch_. "I'm not scared of him! I'm just -- I'm on permanent high-alert."

  
"He gets you so wrapped up in thinking about what _he's_ going to do, you stop thinking about what _you_ want to do. He's like a tornado, right? You just get caught up in it. You keep trying to see what's coming at you next, but there's never any warning, and half the time it's totally out of left field anyway." He makes the 'uh-huh' again, mostly focused on getting the hatches battened back down on his emotions. Her voice sharpens as if she can hear his distraction. "Andy! Listen to me!"

  
"I'm listening," he says, as patiently as he can manage.

  
"What do you want to do?"

  
He sighs. "I want to wear my shirt."

  
"Is that why you called me?"

  
"Well, yeah."

  
"Andy, if you're not scared of him, and he's gonna just do whatever he wants anyway, why don't you just wear that stupid shirt?"

  
"He's --"

  
"He's not gonna slice it up," she interrupts, and now she's the one that sounds heated. "Or maybe he will, but who cares? You're not wearing it anyway. It's lose-lose. Who says he'll stop stealing it if you give him something? Honey, I've played this stupid game, too. You're coming at it from the wrong direction." 

  
It is completely ridiculous that a cheap, faded t-shirt from Target is making him feel this level of overwhelmed. Yet he's still crunched up on the edge of the sofa, elbows on his knees, one fist to his forehead, phone crammed bad-temperedly against his ear. "Okay, enlighten me," he mumbles into it, with less good grace than he knows Tiffany deserves. It's been a long week, all right? "What's the right direction?"

  
"Buy him a shirt because you want to."

  
He works his upper lip against his teeth. "I'm sorry?" he says finally. "That's literally what I said I'm doing."

  
"Sure, but do it because you want to, not because you're hoping you can guide his behavior. He's just gonna be his stupid crazy asshole self regardless."

  
Andy squeezes his eyes shut, groaning softly. "Okay, I'm...I'm sorry. Where exactly are we going with this? I'm sorry, I'm tired."

  
"Andy." She says it gently, almost motheringly, which is ridiculous. "He's always gonna be uncontrollable, you know that. So stop trying to control him. It never does anyone any good."

  
"So just let him have the shirt?"

  
"No, just don't buy him something on the faint hope it'll make him stop wearing it! He's a man -- no offense, sweetie -- you gotta go direct or go home. If you're so heated about the shirt, punch him in the fucking face when he takes it, and maybe if he doesn't like being punched in the fucking face, he'll stop taking it."

  
"Or maybe he'll stab me to death."

  
"Honey." She sounds like she's talking to a child. He tries not to take it personally. "If he didn't do that yet, he's not gonna do it now."

  
"You sure about that? Because this is a verrrry comfortable shirt."

  
"For christ's sake, Andy, just buy him whatever goddamn outfit you want to buy him. He'll probably wear it."

  
"I just want my shirt back," he says.

  
"Sure, and I want to see fewer detention notes in this house, but you can't always get what you want." He can actually hear the glare in her voice as someone gets a meaningful look. "But if you try sometimes, you just might find -- you know how the song goes. So stop trying to maneuver around him and just do what you want. Make _him_ maneuver around _you_."

  
Her argument is darting back and forth, minnow-fast, seemingly aimless; she sounds so certain, though, like there's an undercurrent she's riding that's too deep down for him to feel. He can almost touch it, edges of it brushing his mind, but he doesn't want to reach into such dark water. Wants to pull his hands up and hug his chest, in fact, to make sure he never touches it. "Tiffany, I don't know what you want me to do, here."

  
"Just get him whatever you want him to wear," she says, "and he'll take it from there. Glenda! I _said_ \-- sorry, sweetie, I have to go. Good luck!" _Click_.

  
He stares at his phone. 

* * *

  
Tiffany hums thoughtfully as she pockets her phone. Sounds like the ex has a bit of a shock coming.

  
They've not technically been on speaking terms since the blowout several weeks ago. There have been messages from his end, mostly a repeating pattern of expletive-laden, drunken diatribes punctuated eventually by a shamefaced late-night apology. The same old Charles tune. He's never been good at making good, always too ramped up on his own crazy to maintain the stability a period of reparations requires. Typical. Disappointing, but typical.

  
She's only shot him a brief, angry text now and then in response, intentionally leaving out any details about the kids. Drives him crazy. It's far less comeuppance than he deserves, given how often he's ducked out on them in the past, but Tiffany's done with trying to beat some sense into his gasoline-filled head; the blows never teach him anything, and half the time they spark an explosion. She ignores his regretful, clumsy attempts at re-connecting. She just feels tired. If it weren't for the kids, she likes to think she'd cut him off entirely, just to get some peace from it all. It's a nice thought. She's not sure if it's true, but it's nice to think, nonetheless.

  
The kids were what set them off in the first place. She hadn't anticipated him paying attention to the topic of Glen's piano recital, and his intention to _attend_ was downright left-field. She'd put her foot down immediately, of course; Glen was already worried half sick over the idea of public performance without a partner, so the stress bomb if they happened to glance out at the audience and catch sight of a familiar shock of red hair was obviously no-go. She'd expected Chucky to understand as much. His repeated, increasingly furious insistence he had the right to be there had been more than enough reason to shut him out for a while.

  
She'd half expected his entitled ass to show up regardless -- maybe, if he was feeling particularly sensible or generous, sneaking in the back -- but he'd shown a shocking amount of decency and failed to crash the middle-school piano recital. Incredible. Tiffany wasn't sure if this was due to regret or him being distracted elsewhere. She heavily suspected the latter.

  
The only surprise of the night had been Glen's subdued mood afterwards; it seemed unnecessary, considering the encore their performance had earned. It wasn't until they were home and Glenda was wrecking havoc in the bathroom with her nighttime regimen, safely out of earshot, that she was able to pull the truth out: a little case of The Disappointments. “I didn’t expect him to show up,” Glen had murmured nervously, twisting their hands together, refusing to look her in the face. “But I thought you were gonna tell him the date.”

  
“You _wanted_ him to be there?” she’d blurted, too shocked to address their gentle complaint. They looked down at the carpet, clearly uncomfortable.

  
“N-no. I mean -- no. But I guess I thought -- I thought he might’ve bothered to show? I guess I kind of thought he’d care. But that’s stupid of me, isn’t it?” It was a good thing Glen was looking down, because otherwise they might have read the awkward tinge to her comforting. As it was, she barely managed to get them bundled off to bed without fumbling over Chucky’s supposed disinterest.

  
Callous as it might sound, she has no intention of informing Glen of the truth. There are probably a lot of psychologist-quoted reasons you shouldn’t lie to your children, but the more protection hers have from the unfailingly fickle nature of their father’s attention, the better. Hell, if someone had blocked the way every time she'd sought out Charles' attention back when she was young, she’d owe them a goddamn fruit basket, and probably her life (the first one, anyway.)

  
She also wouldn’t have two lovely, artistic, passionate, intelligent children, but that's kind of a moot point. Any children she did have without Charles wouldn’t be suffering the after-effects of a psychotic father, so. You know. Things balance out. 

  
Chucky is a firestorm, unable to be controlled with anything less than sheer force, and even that's something of a gamble; like all fires, he always has the potential for a dangerous game of one-upmanship, overwhelming strength sometimes doing nothing but fueling him to greater heights of ferocity. The bastard just refuses to heel. Nobody has ever successfully put Charles Lee Ray down and gotten him to _stay_ down, and as far as she knows, nobody ever will.

  
Those are some pretty interesting changes afoot over at the Barclay apartment, though...

  
Until recently, if someone had asked her to describe Chucky's match, any adjective you’d use to casually describe Andy Barclay would not have entered the sentence. Scruffy, soft-built, softer-spoken? Lunchmeat. Chucky would eat that for breakfast and go hunting immediately to finish off his appetite. Yet somehow, every time she bothers to get (or, more typically, is unloaded furiously with) updates from the household, the situation continues to suggest the unbelievable: Charles, the unstoppable force, has finally met an immovable object. 

  
Hell, sometimes the immovable object does move, but it appears to be _advancing_. 

  
Chucky’s messages, goading insults and raspy apologies alike, are tinged these days with a weirdly downturned edge. He sounds desperate. He sounds exhausted. He sounds...

  
Well, he sounds beat.

  
She’s heard the tone before, once in a blue moon. When Charles was injured, mostly, and once or twice -- precious indeed -- when something she said accidentally pried up the iron plating welded around his crazy heart and probed at the soft pulp within. He’d sounded torn in those times, like she'd literally ripped him open. Vulnerable. She's never figured out what makes him associate intimate trust with defeat, but that pernicious connotation has been one of his many (many, _many_ ) little insanities as long as she’s known him. It’s like you have to beat him to hell just to get him tender. Bitch hardens up so damn quick again, too. 

  
She has no idea what kind of bat Barclay’s wielding, getting through Chucky's defenses so often; honestly, she’s more than a little jealous. Clearly he’s using it judiciously and often. Chucky’s voice sounds half-raw in the messages these days, pained, bruise-tender. He always gets particularly cussy when he’s scared. There are a lot of cusses in his messages lately.

  
He's fucking _scared_. God, to be a fly on the wall in that apartment. Maybe Andy can teach her a thing or two.

  
Not right now, of course; he sounds busy. If she knows her ex, poor Andy's going to have his hands full for a few days.


	4. Chapter 4

Ebay is his worst idea by far.

  
After his confusing phone call with Tiffany, Andy puts off his increasingly quixotic task for four days, four days apparently being the longest amount of time he can passively endure the sight of Chucky swanning around the house in a '98 Blondie tour shirt (another classic, worn and comfortable, of course.) Chucky doesn't even _need_ it; his own clothes are clean, as far as Andy can tell, so that means the doll just likes getting through cranky mornings and drowsy evenings with Andy's shirt hanging down to his ankles. Then one night Chucky has to tie it up on one side, sarong-style, to clamber up on the counter, and Andy abruptly decides it's time to get back to clothes shopping. That was too much flash of scarred plastic thigh for any man to be expected to endure in his own house.

  
At 1AM he's scowling at his phone, thumb cramping as he swipes down endless auction listings of vintage Good Guys outfits. There's everything from mass lots of factory selloffs (a hundred sets of overalls wouldn't fit in the guest room closet, regardless of size) to overpriced vintage playsets. The Veterinary Good Guy outfit, complete with stethoscope and clipboard, stirs a hitherto hidden memory from childhood; an ad, one of the many heavily peppered throughout Saturday morning cartoons. He can suddenly hear with absolute clarity the low-quality sound effect of dogs barking, behind the chipper promise to "get you back to good health in no time, buddy!" 

  
When he'd first thought of looking for old Good Guys playsets, he hadn't realized how many memories would get raked up from their burial soil. Now the taste of sugary cereal is suddenly in his mouth, the sound of the half-working radiator clicking away in the Chicago cold is suddenly in his ears. He rolls onto his back, holding his phone up over his head as he browses, just to remind his body with the constant faint line of discomfort buzzing up his arm that he's no longer that child. No longer in that bed, in that apartment, holding that monster.

  
He wants to scream at the wave of frustration that rises when he clicks on page seventeen and is greeted by yet another set of incomprehensible listing titles and blurry images. Shortly thereafter he just purchases a few cheap listings and hopes for the best. Surely at least one of them will fit. At worst, he's wasted fifty bucks and a good night's sleep; at best, he won't have to play peek-a-boo again with Chucky's stitch-slashed thighs on his counter. 

  
"Ow! Fuck!" 

  
His numb fingers finally flubbed it and dropped his phone on his face. When he reaches for it, his searching hand backhands it onto the floor; he curses louder, with more gusto, and stumbles up to feel for it on the carpet.

  
Like it has for twenty-odd years, crouching near a bed pinches his stomach up. He studiously ignores the total darkness underneath, squinting instead at the open floor around him, slashed with slits of moonlight coming through the blinds. What he's always feared in the darkness under his bed is no longer an absent enemy, ready to return at any moment; it's right next door, snoring spread-eagle on his guest cot. 

  
There's nothing under the bed. There's nothing under the bed. Where the fuck is his phone? There's nothing under the bed.

  
Something _slams_ into the wall.

  
Andy lurches forward in gut-churning shock, nearly smacking his skull on the bed frame. The bad-tempered pounding on the drywall is punctuated by muffled shouts, then stops abruptly. In the ensuing silence he swallows repeatedly, trying to coax his heart back down his throat. His mouth is so dry it feels like it's papered over.

  
Another round of thumps on the wall follows. He stares at it, confused, adrenaline-high and, frankly, a little petulant; he knows why _he's_ up at this godforsaken hour, but what's Chucky's excuse?

  
Behind him, his bedroom door flies open. Andy spins on his heel and knee. Backlit by the hallway light, his murderous roommate is nothing but a scruffy silhouette pierced with baby-blue eyes that glint like daggers. Chucky takes two steps into the room, then stops. 

  
Perhaps something in Andy's posture gives him pause. It should. Andy has leaned all his weight on the ball of his back foot, muscles coiling in preparation for the brutal lunge that will drive Chucky straight back out the door; he can already imagine the sound the doll's head will make, cracking against the hallway plaster. Maybe his neck will crack too.

  
"Jesus, what're you doing?" Chucky snarls, and the ragged edges of his fury sound heartily aggrieved. There's an undercurrent of what Andy identifies initially as caution. "Why didn't you answer?"

  
"Answer," repeats Andy, too jarred to filter. In the shadows, he can't see Chucky's scowl, but he knows from the dismissive leer to his tone that it's there.

  
"I knocked on your wall, you dumb bitch! What the fuck are you doing? I fuckin' yelled loud enough -- made me get out of bed --" He's approaching again, but the gait he's using is his angry strut, the one Andy recognizes as fangless posturing. It comes out for arguments about what channel to watch, and who lost the remote, and whose turn it is to do the dishes (it's always Chucky's turn; he just likes to gripe and moan at Andy about it.) "Fuckin' blowjob dream and you gotta freak out over here, four in the _fucking_ morning --" The stab of his pointer and middle finger against Andy's chest is so forceful the man wobbles, still off-balance from his aborted preparation to charge. At this height they're eye to eye, and Chucky's bright blue gaze is lit up with a righteous anger Andy usually identifies as the fury of relief. 

  
Chucky's not here to finish it. He's relieved. 

  
"You wake me up at five AM again and I'll fuckin' _kill_ you."

  
"I just dropped my phone." 

  
His quiet response seems to fuel Chucky's fire, and the doll's fingers clamp into a fist; his next strike is heavier, a slam in the middle of Andy's lungs, hard enough to momentarily steal his voice in an airless gasp. "GodDAMNit!" the doll screeches, fists clutched up like he wants to keep pounding on Andy's chest. "Don't yell like you got shanked cause you dropped your _phone!_ "

  
He rubs his chest, startled to recognize the soreness of a forming bruise. Chucky is pissed. Normally when the doll goes for physical altercations -- ones that don't involve a knife -- it's a thoughtless smack to Andy's leg or the back of his head, whichever Chucky's closer to. This had oomph behind it. "How did you even hear me?"

  
"Shut up. I'm tired and I'm too damn old to be sleeping with you 'cause of nightmares," Chucky grumbles, followed by an array of curses as he clumsily clambers into Andy's bed. "Shit, _you're_ too damn old for me to be sleepin' with you, you baby."

  
Andy gapes at him from the floor. "What are you doing?"

  
"Shut _up_. Shut up and go to sleep, I'm here so you can stop pissin' your pissbaby pants, go to sleep and shut up!"

  
Throwing an arm onto the bed, Andy pulls himself up to stare at the figure making itself comfortable under his blanket. "Get the hell out of my bed."

  
"Did you hear me? Shut up!"

  
"This is my bed!" He looks over his shoulder, immediately spotting his phone with the help of the hallway light now coming in, and reaches back to snag it. Then he clambers up as well, yanking the blankets away. 

  
The redhead gives an offended shriek, kicking -- he's wearing one of Andy's pajama shirts, of course, his short legs kick out of it like he's wearing a dress -- in Andy's general direction. "It's five fuckin' AM! The adults need to sleep! And gimme that!"

  
Feeling like he's being very childish, Andy yanks the blankets further out of grabbing reach, amused despite himself by the absolutely offended look Chucky shoots him when his short arms miss the gap by a mile. "I didn't have a nightmare, I dropped my phone, you're fucking psychotic and this is _my bed_."

  
"And I'm _tired_ and it's _five in the morning_ and it's _cold_ and you're such a _bitch_ ," moans Chucky, strangely drained of his earlier emotional power. Now he just sounds bleary and petulant, as if it's his turn to be the fussy child.

  
"It's two."

  
"Andy, I'm fuckin' begging you, I'm on my goddamn _knees_ like a sinnin' nun, just shut. Up."

  
They stare at each other, adrenaline ebbing from both of their bodies despite the impasse; Andy can see it in the way the blanket slips a few inches in his own grasp, and the way Chucky's shoulders are easing away from his ears, body tugging him back towards the laxness of sleep in spite of his annoyance. In Andy's shirt he looks like something between a doll and a petite dress model in a magazine, arms thrown back in dramatic flair, hair bloomed out across the pillow, one knee crooked up in what looks like coy posing but is probably preparation to kick Andy in the crotch. He looks good in the t-shirt. He'd look good in a long coat, probably, something to mimic the loose lines of cotton draped over his softening hips. 

  
Andy blinks hard, repeatedly. _Christ_. Something crawls rapidly up his throat, and to his absolute horror, he's not entirely certain it's revulsion.

  
"Kid?" Chucky's sleep-gentled tone is piqued with confusion. "What is it?" When Andy doesn't answer immediately, still trying to throttle the strange non-words crowding his chest, he props up on his elbows, voice sharpening in worry. "What the fuck is it?"

  
Andy throws the blanket down over him rather than have to look at his shadow-dappled form one second longer. 

  
The garbled complaint, muffled by the blanket boiling with the furious struggle of tiny hands, helps seam his coherence back together. Andy blinks rapidly again, then drops hard onto his pillow, face-first. At his side he feels Chucky struggle out of the blanket. He feels the boxspring beneath them bounce with the sheer force of Chucky's panicky lunge to freedom. His back is open, in the killer's reach, and probably he shouldn't leave himself so vulnerable to a hunter who doesn't need a gun to do the work; especially one he's just wound up so furiously with adrenaline, and then startled with a trap.

  
He waits for a blow, or a cackle of victory before Chucky taps the small of his back, mocking him for his unwise decision. At least a derisive snarl. Instead there's stillness, and then the slow, breath-soft sound of sheets, plus the sound of someone moving almost stealthily as night air over them. He has to give Chucky credit: if he wasn't on high alert, every muscle waiting, he might not even notice the body shifting beside him. Like all hunters, the doll is inhumanly light-footed when he needs to be.

  
Something slams into the back of his head. In his returning adrenaline, it takes him a second to recognize the ebullient rebound of his head on the pillowcase and the soft thump in his ears: Chucky just smacked him with a pillow.

  
"Idiot," the doll is growling, when Andy comes up for air. He's already turned away, curling in on himself. The blanket is pulled up to his nose. "You have another nightmare, I'm kicking you onto the floor."

  
Belatedly, Andy rolls away as well, staring out into the dark room. He thinks about the fact that he just ordered a bunch of clothes for this monster. He thinks about how Chucky had an ear cocked to his room, bolting in at the sound of danger. He thinks about how the shirt fell loose around Chucky's knees, cradling his wider hips, worn cotton laying so kindly against his pudgy belly. He thinks about how poorly the old playset clothes, stiff and scratchy and boxy, will sit on the doll's slowly softening frame. He thinks about the splay of copper hair on his pillow.

  
He scowls, chewing thoughtlessly on his cheek in anxiety, and forces his mind towards the brain-deadening task of reviewing store inventory. His short-term memory needs work, and lots of it, right fucking now; otherwise the look of submissiveness, of Chucky's gentling body tumbled open and waiting like a flower across his bed, will become memorable. Otherwise he might not forget the image by morning.

  
"What were you doin' on your phone at two in the morning, anyway," comes the sleepy, sour accusation from the other side of the bed. 

  
It must be the surge of irrational guilt that does it, as if Chucky will reach over and take it, somehow know how to unlock it, and then decide to check his browser tabs: Andy's instinctive response is to shove his phone as hard as he can. The plastic case makes an impressive clatter against the bed frame on its way to the floor.

  
"Andy, you _clumsy fuck_ ," is the last thing he hears before hard plastic heels hammer mercilessly against his thigh. He barks out, slamming a hand down to pin a blanket wall between them, and when that doesn't halt the assault he smacks the spare pillow on Chucky's head.

  
They kick and shove and snap at each other for a few more minutes like settling dogs, trading curses, but in a depressingly short time they're still again, fury spent. Andy is shocked at how quickly he hears the tell-tale burr of deeper breathing in Chucky's throat, and when he glances over his shoulder the doll is sprawled open loosely again, dead asleep.

  
He snaps his eyes closed, snuggling down into his own space, and counts the visual memory of butane cans on the shelves, because the way limbs and hair look spread across his sheets is something he doesn't want to remember.

* * *

  
As expected, none of the clothes from Ebay seem right. Sure, they're all the right size, but everything is scratchy felt or cheap no-stretch cotton. Andy ends up folding them all back into their boxes and then hiding those boxes in his closet.

  
It's not that he cares about Chucky's comfort. He doesn't. The doll can wear a trash bag for all he cares. It's just...well, he won't wear them anyway, will he? It'll just be one more thing for the doll to mock him over. Not worth bringing up.

* * *

  
"Sorry?" says Kristen, in the just-barely-balanced tone of voice that always comes out when they blunder into the topic of Andy's problematic roommate. Andy has started thinking of it as her 'Goddamn Fucking Chucky _Again_ ' voice. "You want to tailor him something?"

  
"Do you have a better idea?"

  
"None you want to hear." Next to her, Jeeves almost spits into her coffee; Kristen shoots her a look half-aggravated, half-fond. "Back me up, Jeevie."

  
Andy raises his brow blandly at Jeeves; she swallows and gestures hurriedly to her girlfriend. "You heard the lady. Why bother? Plus, who're you gonna have measure him, anyway? He's notorious, isn't he?"

  
"Yeah, and if they don't recognize him, it's just as bad. I wanna hear your explanation for getting an outfit tailor-made for your Frankenstein Good Guys doll."

  
They're right, of course. It's not as if these thoughts hadn't occurred to him in the fever-dream hours of early morning, floating to the surface as he stared at his dark ceiling and tried to taffy-pull half-dozing ideas into coherent shapes. He almost agrees with them and pushes the idea away.

  
It's stubbornness that sets his jaw. It has to be. There's nothing else he wants to think of it as; there's nothing else acceptable, certainly nothing _sane_ that could drive the surge of annoyance towards his friends. Friends who have done nothing but support him through an incomprehensible and frustrating situation. Nothing decent could make him want to snap at them for dismissing this idea so immediately.

  
Kristen must sense the conflict in him, because she stops giving him a critical look and busies herself with sudden small-talk towards Jeeves. (Jeeves, to both her credit and Andy's eternal gratitude, immediately follows her lead.) For a moment Andy is functionally alone with his coffee mug, his half-eaten muffin, and his heated brain. 

  
He can already envision what he'd ask for if he could. Spent most of last night deciding on it, in fact, chewing away at it from different angles, head bent studiously over his phone. Curled up comfortably against the headboard this time, not staring at the screen above his head. There's no reason to try and keep his body grounded in the present anymore; the sensation of Chucky's body lying next to his has mutated from a memory in the distance to a searing presence at the edge of his brain, waiting for the chance to flare alive any time he touches his mattress.

  
In the morning, Chucky was gone as if he'd never been there. It didn't matter. At night, Andy can close his eyes and almost fool himself into thinking Chucky's in bed with him; it's so easy to imagine the feeling of blankets tangled near his hip. Back in Chicago they always got wrapped around Chucky's short legs, as if the doll kicked in his sleep, or maybe struggled to run. They only stayed tucked neatly in if he wrapped his arms tight around Chucky's neck, cheek pressed to cheek, or his small chin tucked onto the crown of red hair. Chucky always snapped at him in the morning about _bein' fuckin' throttled_. But he never twisted and moaned, dream-wracked, when he was held.

  
"I know what I want," he says, once he feels ready to try again. Kristen looks briefly pained before her expression is schooled firmly into attentiveness. Jeeves, clearly more engaged with her girlfriend's aura than the topic at hand, remains tense. She watches Kristen's face like a picnicking family watches a cloud-trimmed sky: hopeful, casual, but wary. Andy watches her face, too, but with less wariness. He's not concerned by her fury. In some ways, he almost wishes he was. As a friend she deserves an emotional reaction, but too often all she gets is the glazed silence of an outside observer; another victim of his disassociation. She'd get angry at him for the self-beration, though, and what a silly pointless cycle this could turn into, so he tries to focus on making his expression calm.

  
"And what's that?" She's working to keep her voice gentle, too; subtly, but enough that he still feels the edges of his hackles trying to rise. He doesn't want to be handled with kid gloves. He doesn't want to make this a big deal. He just wants to get through it like any practical errand -- deciding on a grocery list, choosing a dry cleaner, remembering to send your sister a birthday card. (He has to make a note to send Kyle a birthday card. It's not for another month, but he's prone to let days slip by, unnoticed, and next thing you know it'll be past. He's got a decade's worth of embarrassed phone calls to prove it.)

  
He fishes in his pocket for his phone. Kristen quirks an eyebrow at him as he starts scrolling through it; he ignores the look, since he can't parse it, and focuses on finding the right tab. "Sorry, I thought I saved -- oh, here." He slides the phone across the table between them, feeling like he should at least make a gesture towards Jeeves' involvement. Obediently, they both bow their heads to study the picture.

  
"Sorry?" says Kristen again, incredulously.

  
"I'd wear it," says Jeeves. "And I don't know how I feel about that. It's a shitty feeling, I can tell you that much."

  
Kristen's hand darts out to secure the phone, predicting Andy's anxious attempt to pull it back; he misses by an inch, brow furrowing, and holds his hand out for it. She ignores him. The girls put their heads together and study some more.

  
"It's nice," says Kristen after a moment, sounding like she's being forced at gunpoint to acknowledge this, and resents it hugely.

  
Jeeves pinches the screen to get a better look at the details. "Is that wool? That's gonna cost a fortune." A thought strikes her the same moment it strikes Kristen, and they start grinning simultaneously; it would look a little creepy if Andy hadn't seen couples' senses of humor sync up over long-term relationships. It's still a tiny bit weird the way they both snicker at once.

  
"Not so bad considering you'll need, what, a quarter of a yard," says Kristen, and Andy's not sure, but he's pretty certain the jostle of their shoulders says they just fistbumped under the table. Now that he thinks about it, he's not really sure why he thought they were the right people to run this idea past.

  
They're the only people he can run it past, though. Well, barring his mother, which is right out. Maybe Tiffany, which is also out. During their last conversation he kept getting the unnerving feeling Tiffany was trying to guide him to some unspoken conclusion, and then getting frustrated when he repeatedly missed it. He isn't sure what was going on there but he doesn't feel up to excavating the memory for clues. He's got enough on his hands dealing with Chucky, never mind the ex.

  
Kristen looks back up at him. "This is really what you wanna get him? Why?"

  
Andy opens his mouth, lets out a half-breath, and closes it again. This is one of the thousand small injuries Chucky has done against him, endless little knife-cuts that bleed his days dry: he can't just explain himself. There's no easy way to. Maybe no sane way. And he knows Kristen knows this, and he knows it would be okay to try -- maybe even okay with Jeeves here, depending, but such things can rarely be figured out beforehand and often you just have to dive into them, headfirst, deep-ending it and hoping for the best. It's nine AM on a weekday morning in a busy public area, however, and so he's forced to simply purse his lips and shrug meekly. This is one of the little daily obeisances that are Chucky's legacy. There are many of them.

  
Kristen's expression gentles. "It's a little heavy for fall, is all," she says. 

  
"Winter'll come soon enough," says Jeeves, who Andy really doesn't give enough credit for how much insane shit she manages to swim through while still coming up smiling. Her relationship with Kristen must be something special if it's worth handling Andy's constant disasters on the side. "And something that classic never goes out of style."

  
"Well, good, 'cause he's like sixty, and I'm pretty sure I'm stuck with him forever," is what Andy says, as Kristen finally hands his phone back. He doesn't say _thanks for pretending this is normal of me to want_ , or _sorry this is absolutely not a fun or sane way to spend your Wednesday morning_ , or _hey, so this is all totally fucking nuts, but you don't hate me for that, right? Right?_ Instead he says, "I just don't know who to go to."

  
"Are you?" says Kristen.

  
"Have you checked out Etsy?" says Jeeves, at the same time. 

  
They make very brief eye-communication -- Andy feels a strange spike of jealousy at how quickly and comfortably they each apparently make their point and come to an agreement -- before Kristen's irked question is erased under Jeeves' safer query. "Yeah, Etsy," concedes Kristen.

  
"What's that?"

  
"Big handcrafted site. Probably -- no, sure, _definitely_ you can find someone on there making outfits for vintage dolls. I heard the American Girl outfit market is booming on there."

  
"Okay, first: why do you know so much about the doll clothing market?"

  
Jeeves laughs. "That'd be on me. You know those toy donation things they do around the holidays? I made us go hunting for outfits. The firehouse we were donating at said they needed doll clothes more than dolls. I guess they had an excess of bodies."

  
He tries to keep it in, he really does. Unfortunately, his already flimsy filters seem to be letting everything through these days. "Don't we all."

  
Jeeves looks like she's not sure whether to smile or frown. Kristen has no such conundrum; she's giving Andy a glower he understands is meant for Chucky, but since Chucky isn't here, he gets to be the focus instead. He pushes onward.

  
"Do you think navy...makes sense?" He stumbles halfway through; he almost said 'will look good.' He does not need to ask if they think navy would look good. There's a theory in science that says there are an infinite number of universes, each one slightly or dramatically different from the rest, and even with the word 'infinite' attached he cannot imagine one in which Kristen has an opinion about Chucky's looks that does not involve inflammatory language. 

  
Hell, Andy's not sure _he_ does. The doll looks like a wax sculpture made by someone who's never met a man before, and who put the sculpture through a wood chipper afterwards. He has a permanent half-squint, a fiery thornbush for hair, and the slipshod, slanted thing you'd call his smile is unnerving at best.

  
"Oh, sure, navy's sensible," is what Kristen settles on, which is impressively diplomatic. Andy exhales with a relief he didn't realize had hit him.

  
"Good. What's that site again?"


End file.
